21947: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel-Haitian activist wins national honor for community healt (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Haitian activist wins national honor for community health leadership

By Alva James-Johnson
Staff Writer
Posted May 18 2004

Francois Leconte was just a concerned Haitian immigrant in 1996 trying to
educate his compatriots about HIV/AIDS.

Now, eight years later, he's president of the largest Haitian social service
agency in Broward County.

The transformation hasn't gone unnoticed.

On Monday, Leconte was named one of 10 people across the country to earn the
nation's highest honor for community health leadership.

The award, from the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Program
in Princeton, N.J., comes with $105,000 for Leconte's organization, Minority
Development and Empowerment Inc.

Leconte, who is married with two children, receives another $15,000 for
himself.

"I'm humbled, and I'm happy, not only for myself but for the whole community
of immigrants, every resident of Broward County and South Florida," he said.
"This success is not only my success, but the success of everyone working
with me for the past eight years."

Leconte, 39, is a native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As a journalist on
Haitian radio, he immigrated to New York in 1991 to escape political strife.
In 1993 he moved to South Florida and began working with a City of Miami
program that housed people with HIV/AIDS.

During a three-year period, he saw the number of Haitians in the program
multiply. When he left the program and moved to Broward in 1996, he sought
an outreach program to help educate the community about the disease.

"None of them had a plan to reach out to Haitians," he said of the
organizations he visited.

So in 1996, he launched his organization with a small contract from the
Community Foundation of Broward County. He said he started as a one-man
operation, standing on street corners and talking to Haitian immigrants. For
three years Leconte, who holds a bachelor's degree in economics, had no
salary.

"I didn't have any idea what I was getting myself into, the politics of
non-profits," he said. "But I met a lot of great people who were willing to
train me and work with me."

These days the organization has 50 employees, both full and part-time, and a
budget of about $2 million.

Leconte said the agency serves between 6,000 to 8,000 people annually,
providing immigrants with health, after school, youth and family, job
placement and mental health counseling services. It is funded by federal,
state, city and private foundation grants. He said the agency is laying the
groundwork to expand its services to Palm Beach County.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation distributes $1.2 million each year to
people who have overcome significant challenges to expand access to health
care and social services in underserved communities.

Leconte and the other winners were chosen from among 800 nominees, said a
spokeswoman from the organization. They will be honored at a June 16 event
in Washington, D.C.

Alva James-Johnson can be reached at ajjohnson@sun-suntinel.com or
954-356-4523.      Email story



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